Quick Tips: Writing an Opening Paragraph

In historical papers, it can be tough opening the whole thing. You need to somehow fit in your thesis with some supporting background information about the topic, all within one paragraph. If you think that it's impossible, don't! You just need an outline to effectively show how it can be written, in little to no time (which is important on tests/exams)!

First, look at the information given to you (since every paper is based on a certain amount of information). You can get your entire background info from here; if you can remember any more than what is on there, though, that can be valuable to show your actual knowledge of the subject. For instance let's say the info was, "The ABC Revolt was in 1888, which kick started the revolution in Country D. This would lead to further uprisings until Country E took over and they became the Republic of F. (I call this the "Alphabet Soup" example.) You could then add any more info pertaining to the revolution, anything after 1888 in the country, etc.

Next, you should already have your thesis. What you'll want to do is use the statement to open up your opening paragraph with the first sentence. If it was "Evaluate the economical and political problems/solutions of the revolution in the Republic", you can use the word "evaluate" and work from there. The same goes for "compare", "contrast", "review", etc.

In the end, you should have something like this: "The Republic of F had many issues after the Revolution. After Country E took over Country F in 1888, the economy and government had begun to take hits. The society was not happy with all of the changes wrought from the Devastation Famine, and were looking for scapegoats. The US also began considering cutting ties with the country due to Emperor G's communist ideals. (Thesis).

While it's not perfect, you can see that I used my prior knowledge (the Devastation and US) and evaluated the situation of the Republic after the Revolution (focusing on issues; I didn't have to do both unless they used "and"). Remember, you can use any big pieces of evidence for your thesis in your opening paragraph; in fact, I encourage it, because it will show later on what you consider the biggest part of your argument.

However, an opening paragraph is NOT JUST A THESIS. Unless your teacher says it's alright, just a thesis alone won't be sufficient enough to open your paper. If you use this outline, you'll be able to be writing college-level essays in no time (or, at least, opening paragraphs)!

-Pharaoh Noh-Tyep

"Why Should I Care About History?"

Earlier today, I was working at my checker position at the grocery store. With the "big blizzard" warning coming up, the store was packed for the entirety of my 6 hour shift; near the end, I was pretty frazzled and was ready to go home. At around ten to 5, a somewhat middle-aged woman came through my line. I immediately noticed her shirt, which said something to the extent of "The South Will Rise Again", Confederate flag and all. I used this to strike up the following conversation:

Pharoah Noh-Tyep: "The South Will Rise Again", hm?

Woman: ...Oh, this? Yeah, I like it! Bought it at [supermarket] for $3!

P: I see. Has anyone commented on it yet?

W: What do you mean?

P: Well, it is the battle cry of Southern Redeemers, those guys who want to restart the Civil War...

W: (confused) The who? What redeemers?

This is where I kind of messed up, and used the wrong words.

P: You know, like...the KKK.

W: WHAT? That's not true! This is just a fashion design. You know, a brand! I ain't a racist.

P: I never said you were. But it isn't just a fashion design. It's a historical phrase that many use to try and...

W: (cuts off) Why should I care about history? It's just a shirt. You're being a little disrespectful.

I couldn't say anything. I admit, I may have gotten a little pushy. But what she had just said...my God. I finished her order without another word, and finished up my shift. I bought a LIFE magazine on Frank Sinatra on the way out.

How can anyone live like that? To not care about history is to spit in the face of those who died to either better the future of protect the unborn generations. Like the woman in the store, it can also lead to horrible miscommunications; what if she had worn that shirt in Baltimore? Or Detroit? That would be like eating KFC in a chicken coop. It's astounding how we've all seemed to just shrug our knowledge of history off on the "geeks" and teachers who actually give a damn. History is our biggest factor to why we're even here; why I'm writing this, why you're reading this, why that lady could even buy more than a pound of apples.

But why should you care, you probably wonder? History class is boring, slow, and dull; I'll just wing the test next week and move on. Guess what? That's perfectly fine. You can continue on in your life, ignoring what isn't exciting and entertaining and filling yourself to your heart's content with what you do enjoy. Then you can go to the store, buy a shirt that says "Hitler Did Nothing Wrong", and wear it proudly to the grocery store because it's what's "in".

If you know me, or even this blog, you know it's my mission to help anyone, even one person, realize how important world history is. My worn out mission statement is that "history repeats itself"; the only way to avoid it is to teach the masses about it. If we didn't care about math, computers would stop dead in their computations. If we didn't care about science, NASA wouldn't have even left the ground. If we didn't care about art, there wouldn't be a Broadway or van Gogh. So what difference is it that we can disregard history? If we didn't care about that, we wouldn't be here.

I can't change anyone's opinion. They're opinions, after all. But we can make a difference by trying to form positive opinions about history when children are young. Take them to a museum instead of the playground for a day. Read them a story about Greek gods once. Teach a class about the strangeness and wonderfulness of the Renaissance. It doesn't have to be a lot, but it has to be something. Our future depends on our appreciation and understanding of history.

Do you know what not caring about history is? Ignorance. Don't breed ignorance. It's lead to worse than a politically incorrect T-shirt.

-Pharaoh Noh-Tyep.

Lesson Idea: Commemorative Stamps

Many historical figures and events have been galvanized on the faces of mailing stamps. Be it Theodore Roosevelt or King George VI, if a person is famous, they'll have a stamp. Many have wondered why stamps have served as such memorable placeholders. I mean, it's only a stamp, right? Well, while that may be true, there's another power at play here: stamps are used by everyone. Even if we're not writing fancy cursive-filled love letters anymore, we all still have to pay those bills. Postage stamps are some of the cheapest forms of the mailing process, so why not use it to educate the masses? If it wasn't for stamps, many people may not have known who suffragist Alice Paul was, or the Battle of Appomattox Court House (or something trivial like the Peanuts' Christmas Special 50th Anniversary); not to mention the millions of stamp collectors. If you want something to be remembered, stick it on a stamp.

For this Lesson Idea, you'll be teaching your students all about history by having them make their own commemorative stamps. Using imagery, the students will be able to present key pieces of their topic and explain to their classmates why their topic was important to history. The one catch is that it either has to be hand-drawn or done under supervision on Publisher/Word. You don't want them plagiarizing an actual stamp!

First, assign the students a historical topic for their stamps. I suggest doing this all over one unit (for instance, the Gilded Age) rather than multiple units; it can get cluttered and confusing when you have to switch back and forth so often in dates. When they have their topics, explain that their stamps must contain at least 5 images that represent them, AND that they must be able to explain what they stand for to their fellow students. Give them at least 4 days to complete this assignment; they'll need all the time they can to research their subjects online and in textbooks!

Let's say that Johnny got "The Square Deal" for his topic. He looks it up online and finds his information. With these five pieces of information, Johnny makes something like this:

But it isn't just artwork Johnny has to do; he also must be able to identify what each part of the stamp represents, like so:

President Theodore Roosevelt was the creator of the Square Deal.
The nature scene shows how the deal helped conserve natural environment.
The shaking hands of "Corporations" and "The American People" shows Teddy strove to equalize them and make big business less powerful.
The railroad system demonstrates the deal's plans to regulate railroads
The deal would pave the way for the creation of the Federal Trade Commission.

If Johnny can explain all this, it's only half of the battle. His fellow students must also be able to understand the stamp; meaning, if an explanation is too vague or too complicated, it's almost as if the student didn't do the work. The point of learning history is so others can also learn and understand its intricacies, which is lost when the teacher has barely any knowledge of it themselves. If Johnny's fellow students learn much about the Square Deal from this one tiny stamp, imagine how much they could learn from a history textbook!

Remember, accuracy is key! Stamps have often immortalized figures in the annals of history-you wouldn't want your students to remember Goerge Washington!

-Pharaoh Noh-Tyep

Quick Tips: Answering Contextual Multiple Choice

On any history test, there's always that question that deals with an excerpt or quote and then asks you "how did this represent such-and-such?" For many students, these questions are the bane of their existence; how can you answer the question when you don't even know how to read it (side note: I have a way)? Well, if you don't want to read a wall of text, you can just go to the source information!

If you don't know what the source info is, it's that little slice of text on the bottom right of a quote/excerpt that gives credit to who said it, what year it was said, where it was published, etc. It usually looks like this:

"God dammit all! Them bloody lobsterbacks can kiss my derriere!

-Patriot John Bates, on learning that his house had been reprimanded by the British, 1776. (Published in Harper's Ferry, 1826). Quoted in "The American Revolution: A Farce" by John Bates IV, 1976.

For starters, there's a lot of years there, but you only need the one where the quote/excerpt came from originally (in this case 1776). If the question was something along the lines of "What group did Bates' sentiments LEAST represent?", with the choices A) The British, B)The Patriots, C) The Nativists, and D) The Republicans, it should be quite obviously B. Not only is Bates called a patriot, the year is 1776 (Revolution time), disqualifying C and D by age.

So, you really don't have to do that much reading! Just go to the sources and the answer should be obvious!

-Pharaoh Noh-Tyep

How to Read History Books

Not many people are readers. Even fewer own more than a few dozen books; usually only ones they were required to buy/read for classes. In this sea of already low readers, the most "boring" genre by far has to be historical fiction/nonfiction books. I mean, who would want to read a biography about Marx when the man's been dead for over a hundred years? Like I've always said on Historical Friction, though, being able to understand and appreciate historical literature can be very beneficial. Besides giving a broader sense of certain topics, readers can also use what they've learned in their history classes. But you can't effectively use this information unless you can "read" the content of the book; in this sense, be able to identify what is Useful and what is Not Useful. The reason you need to separate the two is because authors are people, too; oftentimes personal opinions will make their way into biographies on world leaders or heroes (a great example of this is Republican reporter Bill O'Reilly's Killing series on American presidents, a general, and even Jesus). You can do this so easily, you don't even need specific steps; a trend on this blog I'm hoping to get away from. This is much like the post "Disregarding Bias in Historical Accounts", but instead of removing bias to publish an account, you'll be trying to find truth among an already published novel.

To begin, let's take a passage from two books on the historical figure Pharaoh Noh-Tyep (yes, this is an example). One was written by Professor A, a qualified expert in Egyptian history, and the other by Dr. B, a celebrity talk show host who has a knack for history but no qualifications; the former is a report on the figure and the latter is a fictional story. They read:

"In Egypt, never has their been a figure like the Pharaoh Noh-Tyep. His kingdom ruled far and wide, spreading from the Northern regions to modern-day Congo. Truly, he was a man to be dealt with; wise and powerful in his ruling yet strict and violent in his conquests. Outshining Ramses and Cleopatra, Noh-Tyep should be a household name. But his corruption and deceiving brother proved his downfall, and today he is noticeably absent in many history textbooks..."   -Professor A

"As the Pharaoh looked out upon his kingdom, he thought on his life. Born to Pharaoh Rey-gef and Queen Joanna the Graceful in the late 4000s B.C.E, his life was far from toiling. But he had worked hard to get to where he had arrived, as the "Conqueror of Zaire" and ruler of most of the African continent. As he pondered his next move, he was already being buried. His traitorous brother, Ra the Mighty, had begun to smite his name out of the hieroglyphs back home. None would know of his plans for the Pyramids, or his peaceful trade with the Orient. Ra would take his place, and ruin his reputation forever..." -Dr. B

Seems simple enough, right? The one with the most experience-Prof. A-obviously has the best information to use in a historical setting. Right?

In reality, you can't use the entirety of A's passage. But why? For starters, it contains nothing factually relevant to the history of Pharaoh Noh-Tyep: his birth, the context, who he conquered, why he was deceived, etc. It actually reads like an affective report on the figure by the Professor; opinion has no place when determining truth. This passage, therefore, is Not Useful.

On the other hand, Dr. B's passage, while fictitious, is actually based in fact. It gives relative birth years, parents, other names, context, motive, etc. By using fiction, B has successfully relayed factual information. While there could be opinions in the novel, it can be almost masked by the fiction and refocus the reader on facts. This makes the book somewhat Useful.

Surprisingly, this is often how it is with history books. The novel can be written by a remarkable expert and be more opinionated than an article in the National Enquirer, or be written by a TV Star and be incredibly accurate and useful. However, don't throw out the expert's novel just yet; while one passage may be biased, the rest of the novel could be completely informative; the same goes for the "celebrity drama". If you just focus on the useful info, though you'll always be able to find a use for it in history class.

-Conqueror of Zaire

Analyzing Political Cartoons

In much of contemporary history, people made statements by making cartoons. I don't mean comic strips like Garfield or Dilbert, but rather political cartoons-the oldest source of political humor. Going as far back to Ancient Greece, these drawings have hidden within their witty comments and satirical nature a way to contextualize the era from which they originate. As history students, it will often be your job to find out why the cartoon was created and what it means; political cartoons are used in many questions on both the AP World and US History exams to determine how much you understand. But it isn't easy to find out what these comics mean; oftentimes they're old enough to have phrases, words, names unfamiliar to the modern tongue, or it talks about events you've only lightly covered in history class or haven't discussed at all. It's imperative, then, to figure out how to analyze these cartoons to ensure your grade will stay up and have an easier time in history class.

To begin, we'll need an older political cartoon. For this example, I've chosen one by famous American cartoonist Thomas Nast, called "Every Dog Has His Day". It appeared in Harper's Weekly on February 8th, 1879 in the US.

As you can see, there are many things going on in this picture. In the main focus, there appears to be two heavily stereotyped images of a Chinese immigrant and a Native American (judged by the clothing). They also appear to be upset at the writing that appears on the leftmost wall, which has phrases like "The Chinese Must Go!" and "Down on the N*gger, KKK". But what is this cartoon trying to portray? What does the native have anything to do with it? Whose that black man in the background? So many questions can get you confused on the main message of the cartoon; luckily, you can break down the cartoons's meaning with Context, Point of View, and Purpose.

Let's begin with Context. We already have a date-February 8th, 1879-so we can only use information about the US up to that point. At the time, mass immigration from both the east and west was beginning to bog down the States with Irish, Germans, and the Chinese. Because of this, many natives (not the Indians) became concerned for the well-being of the country, and how jobs were being given to migrants instead of "natives". This further led to anti-immigration sentiments from both coasts of the country. This explains the "Chinese Problem" texts on the wall, and the presence of the Chinese man, who is representing all Chinese immigrants (like these immigrants, he is disgusted at what the US is doing). 

Under the anti-Chinese text, there is a text that reads, "The Know-Nothingism of the Past: Down with the Irish, Down with the Dutch". The Know-Nothing Party was a Nativist movement form the early 1800s, that called for expulsion of the Dutch and Irish immigrants. Visually located at the bottom of the wall, and half-buried, this reveals how the present is mimicking the past (also lending to the title "Every Dog Has His Day" for being hated). 

The Indian represents the US Natives, who were forced west by the European immigrants who eventually became the "natives"; basically, he's there to show the Americans are hypocrites, seeing as they are immigrants themselves. The black man in the back is saying "My Day Is Coming", while relaxing on a hay bale. This shows that once the Chinese are dealt with, the next scapegoats for the Americans will be the blacks of America (who aren't even immigrants), who don't seem to be too surprised.

With all of this information, you can now figure out the author's Point of View. As a political cartoonist, Nast may have figured all of this hypocrisy was hilarious, and made the cartoon to demonstrate that the US may be a "melting pot", but won't be kind to any migrants. Furthermore, you can derive the Purpose of the cartoon. In this case, it seems to be making a statement that the States will go so far as to slander one race while accepting or ignoring another, and continue this cycle ad infinitum. This cartoon, basically, was made to show the US that they are being ignorant and hypocritical based on their history.

If you simply use Context, POV, and Purpose, you'll never be stuck on a political cartoon's meaning! Even if you are, it's a picture-you can derive an answer to a question based on what you see!

-Pharaoh Noh-Tyep